(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-16 19:35

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 208 people worldwide since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds.

A team from the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit in Cairo was being dispatched to Pakistan to help with the investigation, said Dave Daigle, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Khalif Bile, WHO representative in Pakistan, told The Associated Press on Saturday that preliminary tests had been carried out. He said the WHO was encouraging the government to carry out confirmation tests in the same government laboratory and the results should be available by Tuesday.

People who came into contact with those infected in Pakistan are being monitored, the WHO said.

A brother of the two men who died in Pakistan said Saturday he had been hospitalized with flu-like symptoms. Mohammed Ishtiaq said he fell ill last month after slaughtering chickens suspected of carrying bird flu at a farm near Abbottabad.

"I was not aware that this was such a dangerous disease," said Ishtiaq, a veterinary doctor who works for a government-funded livestock program. He said he wore no protective clothing.

His two brothers did not accompany him to the farm, but visited him in a hospital, Ishtiaq told Associated Press Television News in the village of Sukur.

He identified his brothers as Mohammed Ilyas and Mohammed Idrees and said they were both studying at an agriculture college in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

It was unclear if they had other contact with poultry or another potential sources of infection.

Pakistan has grappled with outbreaks of bird flu in poultry for the past two years, but had previously not confirmed cases in humans.

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